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Chapter 3: up the St. Mary's.
If
Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers,
Corporal Robert Sutton was the natural prime-minister.
If not in all respects the ablest, he was the Wisest man in our ranks.
As large, as powerful, and as black as our good-looking
Color-Sergeant, but more heavily built and with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more meditative and systematic intellect.
Not yet grounded even in the spelling book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who could instruct him, until his .companion, at least, fell asleep exhausted.
His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much.
But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly: superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the solid truth.
Of course his interest in the war and in the regiment was unbounded; he did not take to drill with especial readiness, but he was insatiable of it, and grudged every moment of relaxation.
Indeed, he never had any such moments; his mind was at work all the time, even when
